Right, so for as much as far too many of our politicians on both sides of the house right now are in hoc to the Israel Lobby, happy to do their bidding, aid and abet them in their genocide and continue to ignore the overwhelming will of the British people who want a ceasefire, we don’t look at our media in the same way and we probably should.
We know MPs get lobbied, we know they get lots of lovely perks via associated groups such as Labour Friends of Israel and the Tory equivalent too. The antisemitism scam against Jeremy Corbyn saw a number of newspapers come out and accuse him of being weak on tackling the issue, being antisemitic himself and doing whatever was within their power to do so, the Guardian was notable for this, particularly Jewish journalist Jonathan Freedland, but as much as we can surmise he might have had pro Israel leanings from what he wrote, his mother incidentally was Israeli born, read into that what you will, though Freedland once wrote she was even more hawkish than he was on matters relating to Israel. But this isn’t about Freedland, at least not in any sense I’m aware of, because another far more blatant example of entryism into the media by Israel has been uncovered in the US and it has begged the question how could this have happened and has it happened elsewhere?
Right, so pro Israeli headlines in our mainstream media is nothing new to us, but we take such things with a heavy pinch of salt when we can read an article one moment and then witness the bare uncensored imagery of what is happening in Gaza right now on social media. No filter, no bias, and although in this era of deep fakes it’s no longer necessarily true to say the camera doesn’t lie, when the images are so numerous and coming from so many different sources, we know beyond doubt what we’re witnessing to be true.
We know the power of the mainstream media, we know it’s power to influence and distort as well as inform. Those of us on the left of politics, those of us who were supporters and activists for Corbyn’s Labour as I was, knew the power they had, the influence they could bring to bear, from daily attack pieces on Corbyn, accusing a lifelong antiracist of being a literal danger to Jewish life in the UK, certainly worth remembering as MPs currently claim to fear for their own safety as they are in the news now, when Corbyn being attacked, or with people camping on his doorstep or climbing on his roof, when by and these same people worrying about themselves now, were laughing about that then and whether you liked Corbyn or not, surely the hypocrisy there is something you can agree with.
But there’s been a scandal stateside which might imply that Israel are upping their game perhaps and again the media has been complicit in this.
The New York Times, one of the largest and most prestigious of US newspapers, has it has been discovered, employed as a journalist, a former member of the Israeli Defence Force, who’s written work has amounted to little more than pro Israel propaganda, all coming out after the paper ran a front page piece by this individual smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ sexual violence. The article was co-written by a woman called Anat Schwartz, who’s employment began at the New York Times late last year, where her first article was a piece called ‘Screams without words’ which became widely discredited due to the many unevidenced, unsubstantiated claims made regarding the night of October 7th and accusations against Hamas, accusing them of using rape and mutilation against Israelis on that night, systematically using sexual violence as a weapon of war. The family of the alleged victim kicked up merry hell over it, said they’d been misled about the intent of the article and who’s story made up around a third of the whole article. A poor first piece, by a poor journalist, but Schwartz wasn’t just a poor journalist, she wasn’t actually a journalist at all. In fact what she was, was a former Israeli intelligence officer in the IDF. How in blazes did she get the job? The New York Times, is one of the biggest names in US journalism, one of their biggest papers, a prestigious place, journalists across the world never mind just the US would give anything to get a byline in that paper, they can really say they’ve made it, yet somehow, a complete non journalist, got a gig there. How that happened, absolutely needs to be made public, because if Israel can infiltrate the media there, they can do it anywhere.
Now this Screams without words article came out in late December and was co-authored by three people, Jeffrey Gettleman, who is the South Asia bureau chief for the New York Times, he’s Jewish, along with Anat Schwartz and someone else called Adam Sella, who is based in Tel Aviv, but works for the New York Times and also happens to be Anat Schwartz’s nephew by marriage and just 24, so he’s done amazingly well to be writing for the New York Times at such a young age!
Now Schwartz’s husband, Dan Solla, posted a very interesting kind of an introduction to his wife in relation to that Screams without words piece, made all the more interesting given the response I just mentioned from the family of one victim who were interviewed for it. He wrote on social media:
‘Two months of literally round the clock work ended yesterday when this devastating story was published. You know Anat Schwartz as a filmmaker but a few days after October 7th her life took a turn and she started drilling down into some of the most horrific angles of the Hamas attack. I was skeptical initially, but for Anat my skepticism only makes the challenge more interesting. Anat and her fellow reporters, the Pultizer prize winning Jeffrey Gettleman and my amazing nephew Adam Sella interviewed over 150 people for this investigation and the things they saw and heard were unbearable. The story is not for everyone. Parts of it will haunt you at night. But it’s extremely important that the truth will be out.’
You should have stuck with your feelings of skepticism sunshine. Schwartz was not a journalist, she was a filmmaker as well as having been in the IDF. Gettleman for his part, Pulitzer prize or not, has a track record of overt pro Israel leanings and also making stuff up, completely fabricating a quote for example by former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when he was an Africa correspondent.
Schwartz herself wasn’t exactly working around the clock either, she still found time for social media too. She liked a post on October 7th calling for Gaza to be turned into a slaughterhouse, a post so damning, South Africa actually cited it in their case against Israel at the Internation Court of Justice. She also liked a post relating to the long debunked story about 40 beheaded babies and also liked another post, this one a lot more sinister given the position she had got herself into, relating to building an effective propaganda campaign to equate Hamas with ISIS. What wonderful journalistic integrity that was! You cannot have journalists more interested in making news than just reporting it. That’s insane, especially in light of the New York Times having fired another reporter, Jazmine Hughes, simply for signing a letter opposing Israel’s genocide. That certainly puts the papers bias on this issue starkly on show.
Why did the New York Times hire Schwartz? Was it their doing? It does at least seem plausible given how they treated Hughes. Did they want someone who would just frame Palestinians as sub-human monsters and Schwartz was willing to do it, journalist or no? And it very much is no, since she had never, ever worked as a journalist anywhere else ever before getting this gig at one of the most prestigious papers in America, churning out gut-wrenching filth that served only the interests of the Israeli propaganda machine and has brought that prestigious publication into severe disrepute.
Or was it something else? Did Schwartz present herself as something she wasn’t? Did she fraudulently gain employment there? Did her former intelligence training help her with this? What are we to make of other former intelligence operatives who may have ingratiated themselves into the media or politics? I’m thinking of Assaf Kaplan who Keir Starmer hired to spy on members social media facilitating his purge of the left.
I’m honestly leaning towards the former. I’m sure she was a fantastic state intelligence asset, but this really does smack of a paper with an agenda, employing someone prepared to do something no journalist of any reasonable professional integrity was prepared to. As this has come out the staff are split, half of them outraged at the abandonment of journalistic integrity, but still leaves half of the newsroom who aren’t!
Anat Schwartz and the New York Times are apparently parting ways, but that really is only because this has all been found out. The paper has launched an investigation, but what will it find in investigating itself? Frankly this needs independent investigation, because people need to know if that paper has been compromised further, who enabled it, who’s driving it, is this more malign Israeli influence higher up the chain? Who can trust any reporting on Israel coming from them now?
Now you can argue that this might just be one paper, one example of said propaganda being delivered but it isn’t. Arguably a more damaging story was the one the Wall Street Journal ran, implying UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, was laundering money for Hamas, which triggered the US and Genocide Joe to pull funding for UNRWA, which in turn triggered our government here in the UK to do likewise, and other nations too. UNRWA is still facing financial collapse and has given up trying to get aid into Northern Gaza now. That piece was written by a woman called Carrie Keller-Lynn, who had also served in the Israeli Defence Force.
Fundamentally the question is is this happening in our media here too, with the stories many of our rags churn out? Well maybe, but perhaps journalistic integrity is sorely lacking too, I certainly believe that, its why this channel exists.
Meanwhile as the Israeli propaganda machine continues to flex wherever it can find an outlet to spread its nonsense, Israel continues to be laid bare at the International Court of Justice. I covered an absolutely astonishing presentation on behalf of the Arab League of Nations on this video recommendation, where Israel’s very right to exist is on legally rocky ground, fascinating stuff I wasn’t aware of, do give it a look and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.